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Wednesday, May 25, 2005

To Tell You The Truth

"Those who know, don't say. Those who say, don't know."

While truth is a slave to perception, and trust takes a lifetime to build and a moment to break, the human being relies on retrospective sensemaking to decipher what is real and then to act (See Karl Weick's work for details on sensemaking).

When those who, in fact, actually do know the truth keep it shrouded in a code of secrecy and silence, and it is kept isolated in remote pens (Guantanamo), it is difficult to decipher the real from the fabrication. Nothing is stopping people from believing what they do based on the information (reported, sifted, leaked, or gotten via the FOIA) received and filtered by their own experience. Actions reflect beliefs. Will Newsweek reinstate their article in light of this current report?

Slice:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An FBI agent wrote in a 2002 document made public on Wednesday that a detainee held at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had accused American jailers there of flushing the Koran down a toilet...

The newly released document, dated Aug. 1, 2002, contained a summary of statements made days earlier by a detainee, whose name was redacted, in two interviews with an FBI special agent, whose name also was withheld, at the Guantanamo prison for foreign terrorism suspects.

The American Civil Liberties Union released the memo and a series of other FBI documents it obtained from the government under court order through the Freedom of Information Act.

"Personally, he has nothing against the United States. The guards in the detention facility do not treat him well. Their behavior is bad. About five months ago, the guards beat the detainees. They flushed a Koran in the toilet," the FBI agent wrote.

"The guards dance around when the detainees are trying to pray. The guards still do these things," the FBI agent wrote.

The Pentagon stated last week it had received "no credible and specific allegations" that U.S. personnel at Guantanamo had put a Koran in the toilet.

...In another document, written in April 2003, an FBI agent related a detainee's account of an incident involving a female U.S. interrogator.

"While the guards held him, she removed her blouse, embraced the detainee from behind and put her hand on his genitals. The interrogator was on her menstrual period and she wiped blood from her body on his face and head," the memo stated.

A similar incident was described in a recent book written by a former Guantanamo interrogator.

End slice:

Whom do you believe? These reports seem to be too outlandish to have been made up. In fact, given the pictures out of Iraq, they apear to be quite plausable.

In the end, I don't really think it matters whether the book was flushed. The ideas written therein will not be harmed. Sure the whole thing is disrespectful, but the second account, if true, really is disturbing...and what makes the whole thing really reprehensible is that we don't know how many "prisoners" are being held with no connection to any illegal activity whatsoever.

Sure, I should trust my government. When W, stood up and proclaimed that there were WMD in Iraq, unequivocally. I said, "well, I suppose it is time to place some faith in the President and trust he is operating with more information than me."

In the long run, my trust was not warranted, earned, nor kept, thereby making it all the more challenging to trust the W, Rove and Co at all. There in lies the rub.

Because people make decisions to act based on their perceptions of the truth as understood through the filter of their past experiences, we should not be surprised at any reaction to this news. We should expect more of the same, if not an escalation.

Unfortunately, I'm still waiting, with a large portion of the world, for something trustworthy to spring forth from this Administration. Instead things appear to be getting worse.

7 comments:

Good post. GW is a very trustworthy president only to those who drink his Kool-aid and there are many of those. I don't know what it is, but the boy wonder could get caught admitting to lying on tape and they still wouldn't believe it. They would spin it into another Dan Rather. The lies of this president will come back to haunt him one of these day as if the responsibility of over 1600 dead Americans, over 100,000 dead Iraqis and an untold amount injured wasn't enough.

Obviously you don’t believe Bill Clinton, John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, Hillary Clinton, Tom Daschle, etc., etc., etc., when they flat out proclaimed there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Do you also deny the Holocaust? Don’t you believe the pictures of dead mothers and dead babies killed by gas delivered by Saddam. Perhaps you don’t consider gas a WMD. Of course, I understand that it’s OK for Libs to lie, that’s their life’s work. But please, can’t you just one try to be honest and get your quotes correct. Sorry I keep forgetting that you get your information from the likes of Newsweek, NYT, CBS, and those other paragons of journalist propriety.

Are you forgetting that Bill Clinton not only believed but bombed targets in Iraq calling them nuclear bomb factories. Then after 9-11 said and I quote “Heck, I don’t know if we got 80, 90 or 100 per cent of those nuclear bomb factories.” Ol’ Billie Boy with his cigar and intern is a liar too? Is that what you’re saying? Oh no...Clinton’s not a liar, at least not by you lib’s definition.

You say “W, stood up and proclaimed that there were WMD in Iraq, unequivocally.” You are a flat out liar. I challenge you to find that quote, the exact words mind you because you have quotes around them, in any unbiased mainstream media outlet in the country. What he said was we can’t afford take the chance of having Saddam WMD.” He used them on to kill his Kurdish population, he’d certainly provide them to terrorists to kill Americans.

Well, windbag, ooooops, “windspike” you demonstrated your complete lack of honest for the umpteenth time. Do you ever tell the truth? NOT!

You are becoming less dear and more outrageous. Did you even watch W on television the days before he said we were going to start another war, within what ever time frame he stipulated? Or, was that too long ago for your memory so clouded by keeping track of the missdeads of others?

I watched the whole statement W made to the public the few days or whatever before we went into Iraq. The statement above was my understanding of his message. If you need verification, go look for it yourself. I am not going to give you a lesson in google searching.

Indeed, the fact that you are calling me a liar is the exact point of my post. QED, yet again. Thank you for passing through and leaving yet more evidence.

Obviously the reason you think I’m more outrageous is because you’ve been caught in a lie. You suggest I go “googling” for a quote you made up. The verification responsibility remains with you. I didn’t call you a liar. I said the quote was a lie and demanded that you produce the exact statement you quoted President Bush as saying.

If you could have provided the exact quote you attributed to President Bush it wouldn't have been a lie, now would it. But you couldn't. Too much Michael Moore I think.

You yourself verified your quote was a lie by admitting it was “my understanding of his message.” That’s a long way from your fabricated quote. Meanwhile, you’re the one leaving the evidence of dishonesty. What did you expect when you posted a blog that only people who agreed with your unsubstantiated allegations would respond? Are you sure you don’t write for Newsweek or CBS? The president said we can’t take the chance that Saddam has WMDs

What is so amazing to me is that Bill Clinton bombed Iraq to take out his nuclear labs without UN permission and invaded Kosovo without even consulting the UN taking America to war. I bet you never made a peep about that. Clinton promised “at the time” we’d be out in a year. “Hello!” We’re still there! Did you criticize Clinton once for sending cruise missiles up a camel’s butt and blowing up some tents in the Afghanistan desert or bombing Iraqi factories killing the janitors? I bet you said absolutely nothing about those fiascos.

I’m sure glad SheaNC is there to kiss your tush and rationalize your inconsistency. I’m sure he makes you feel so much better. I take it that your statement that I’m becoming less dear is an effort to censor my comments. I’ll take “outrageous” as a complement. You are as consistently inaccurate and full of yourself as ever. Keep it up, more fodder for fun.

One last item. I noticed you tried to write a satirical Rove quote but you aren’t very good at it. You might want to consider some other literary device. But I will take your effort to imitate my blog as a complement.

Why don't you demand that I get off your blog, but then that would be censorship wouldn't it.

atRandom, had you been able to restrict your debate to facts, you might have been able to save the last bit of credibility you had. Instead, you sink deeper into the muck from which you slithered by using personal insults to try to distract readers from your own shortcomings. You are what is known in usenet newsgroups as a troll: one who gets his jollies by making rude, inflammatory statements simply to provoke a reaction.

If you had presented your rebuttals in the form of mature discussion in this blog, you might have entered into a mutually beneficial exchange of ideas. Instead, you flail and whine like a spoiled toddler. No wonder folks like you are so threatened by the "intellectual elite."